Of course things can change. There might be a rush back to the rust belt for some reason.
Or, more likely, the Sunbelt boom ends. Isn't Georgia's growth in particular is driven largely by the explosion of the Atlanta metro area? And a large portion of that growth is coming from a particular subsection of the US population (African Americans)? And, IIRC, the Atlanta area is already experiencing water issues. I'm not sure how much more it can keep growing, and if rural Georgia keeps declining like it has been...
On the other hand, I could very easily see Georgia passing Ohio within a couple decades, but there are so many variables at play here.
The first issue - with respect to the boom in the Sunbelt - has largely already come to pass. Sure, people are still moving to Georgia, but that growth ground to a screeching halt in relative terms once the Great Recession began.
With regard to African-American growth specifically, said drop-off has been even larger.
Year-to-year Census estimates (shown here; lightest-colored set of numbers/lines) are not exactly the most accurate, but Georgia's black share of the population was growing by
one percentage point every three years throughout the 00s (from 28.7% in 2000 to 31.5% in 2010). From 2010-2013, that number remained flat (31.5% in 2010; 31.4% in 2013).
As the recent figures have shown, Georgia grew by 1.5 million people in the 00s; if we adjust the numbers and project for this decade, Georgia will only grow by a little more than a million people in the 10s.
Now, this is a slow-down, for sure, but the state will continue to grow faster than the national average (whereas Ohio will not). The major dynamic in play here is that Georgia's population - as was already mentioned - is skewing a lot younger today than Ohio's population. Ohio and Georgia's fertility rates are virtually identical as of right now - as are the mortality rates - but the movement of people into and out of these states will be what determines how each shifts in the coming decades. I also tend to think that Ohio's birth rates will begin to slow and their mortality rates will begin to increase in the coming years, further widening that discrepancy.
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